The bristle field of modern toothbrushes comprises multiple filament tufts. A filament tuft comprises a predefined number of individual filaments which are arranged to each other with parallel length axes. During manufacturing of toothbrushes these filament tufts are separated from a filament reservoir, also known as filament container, comprising a plurality of filaments loosely arranged with parallel length axes. One side of the filament container is open or comprises an opening so that the filaments can be transferred continuously against said opening. At the opening the filaments can be taken out by a tuft picker. Said tuft picker comprise at least one tuft-picking notch which dimension is identical to the dimension of the filament tuft to be produced. Different tuft-picking devices are known in the state of the art, e.g. devices comprising tuft-picking notches of different size (U.S. Pat. No. 7,635,169B2) or shape (US 2013/0038115 A1). However, these devices are only applicable to round filaments comprising a more or less homogeneous surface and diameter.
Toothbrush development focusses on cleaning performance looking continuously for new filaments with a different cleaning property compared to the standard round filaments, Nowadays, irregular filaments, in particular filaments comprising depressions, recesses or the like along their length axes came into fashion as these filaments take up the removed dust and complement current cleaning performance. Prominent examples for said new kind of filaments are X-shaped filaments. Unfortunately, X-shaped filaments cannot be produced with the present manufacturing devices. One problem is the picking process, as the current picking devices do not work properly for X-shaped filaments. The problems are inter alia splicing of filaments, picking different numbers of filaments up to picking no filaments and/or losing picked filaments after having picked them so that X-shaped filament tufts cannot be formed properly at the moment. In particular splicing of filaments causes problems for the final toothbrush as sharp edges might hurt the gum of the toothbrush user.
That means, a need exists for a new tuft picker which is adapted to pick filaments comprising depressions, recess etc., including X-shaped filaments. Thus, it is the object of the present application to provide such a new tuft picker which picks filaments comprising depressions, recess etc., such as X-shaped filaments, with a high operational reliability regarding number of filaments and without any splicing.